


Practicality; Sentimentality

by borrowedphrases



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Lightly Implied Ben Solo/Poe Dameron, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-18 00:11:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5890540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/borrowedphrases/pseuds/borrowedphrases
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leia is no Jedi, she chose not to pursue the same path as her brother after she learned of her blood heritage, but sometimes, when she tries, she can feel the threads of the Force, the paths certain things might take.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practicality; Sentimentality

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking way too much about what Ben's childhood might have been like. This particular scene hit me at work, and I couldn't settle until I set it down.

Sunlight streams in through the kitchen window, glinting off the faucet as Leia slips her hands beneath the water to wash grease from them. She learned long ago that mechanical problems were best solved by herself, unless Chewie was around. Han was good with the Falcon, sometimes - at least he kept it airborne _most_ of the time - but around the home he often made things much worse before he made them better. They had gone through two heating units and an oven before she learned that lesson.

As she grabs a bristle brush from beside the sink to start scrubbing the grime from beneath her nails, she gazes out the open window, across the small yard she likes to tend whenever she gets the chance. There are a few flower beds, a small vegetable patch, and a little stone path leading down a hill toward a small pond. On the bank of that pond, near a little dock with a small boat tethered to it, grows a blue flowering tree, old as their son is; one of the last remnants of her childhood homeworld. She sprouted that tree from a seed she had kept with her since childhood, her and Han's fingers together pushing it down into a little dirt filled pot when she found out she was pregnant with Ben, as was the now dead custom.

The neighbors look after the gardens when Leia and her family are off world, which happens more often than she would like. She is still a general, even if she has a family now, and she would be lying if she said she completely desired a simple life of gardening and fixing their home and caring for her family. Even if it wasn't Han's wanderlust being nearly infectious, she's never been one to put down proper roots, not after Alderaan. Even here, with their home and the gardens, the rooms they've raised their son in, and that narrow sturdy tree growing down by the pond, she could easily pick up and leave, find a new home, resettle. She's kept a new seed from that tree with her, just in case.

There's a series of shouts outside, the delighted wavering screech of a boy's voice in the process of changing, followed by another one that's slightly more settled, slightly more a man's. Two young teens run by the window shouting at one another. The older of the two turns to run backwards, lifting a hand and waving above his head at her with a wide bright smile on his face.

"Hi, General Organa!" Poe yells as he fumbles his way through a clumsy, but earnest, salute. 

Leia laughs, waving to the boy and then giving him a proper salute. There's so much delight in him that he trips in his backwards run. Leia covers a gasp with a soapy hand a second before the other boy catches him by the arm and hoists him back level on his feet. She breathes a sigh of relief, ever thankful for her son's quick reflexes - Luke has been asking after those, after Ben, but she's still reluctant to let him go, doesn't want to give up her boy just yet. She wants at least another year. Maybe two.

"You two be careful!" Leia calls through the window, and she can just make out the roll of her son's eyes beneath his wild dark bangs. "Don't do _anything_ your father would do, Ben, you hear me?"

"Yes, mom." Ben drawls. He grabs Poe by the wrist after, and starts dragging him off toward the boat dock. 

Leia watches them yank their shirts over their heads and strip down to their shorts as she scrubs the last of the oil and dust from her fingers. Poe is faster about it than Ben, flinging his shirt high into one of the tree's branches before thundering down the dock. He tucks his legs up beneath him after he leaps out over the water, and Ben covers his face at the last second before the splash hits him. He's slower about getting into the pond than Poe was, sitting down on the end of the dock and dangling his legs into the water, hands gripping the edge. He doesn't get to sit there long, pretty soon Poe is grabbing his hands and yanking him off the dock, dragging him down to swim with him.

"Well, I think I've got just about everything sorted." Han's voice startles Leia from watching the boys swimming as he comes into the kitchen. He's carrying a large crate that's near covering his face, his eyes just peaking up over the top of it, and he sets it down on the counter beside her with a loud thunk.

"Most of the junk I already put with the trash, and the things I thought we should keep have been marked for storage." Han lifts the lid off the crate as he speaks, angling it so that Leia can look inside at the contents. "But I wasn't sure what we should do with all this."

Leia dries her hands on a dish towel, then reaches to tug the crate down a bit further as she lifts herself slightly up on her tiptoes to see what's inside. Every few years they went through all their belongings, sorted out the junk they were keeping around just because, pruned things down closer to just the essentials. It would make things easier for them if they had to pick up and leave quickly at any point, and it also just made things easier around the home. It was easier to be away for the long chunks of time they often were when there wasn't too much of themselves left back at home waiting for them.

"Oh." Leia feels a twinge in her heart when she sees what's inside the crate, and she briefly looks up to meet Han's gaze before going through the items. A little toy blaster, a model Corellian freighter, a children's holo-series, a little wooden stick that had been painted - in the clumsy way only a child's hand could - a vibrant green for most of its length, a little rag doll with a small collection of removable and interchangeable clothes from different cultures and worlds, and many others toys in various states of well-loved worn and dusty.

"Ben hasn't played with these in years." Leia says as she lifts the doll from the crate, her eyes going a bit more misty than she would care to admit as she tugs its shirt a bit more carefully back into place over its arms. She can feel one of Han's steady hands rest on her shoulder, gripping lightly, his thumb rubbing a circle over her collarbone.

"There probably isn't a reason we should be keeping them around." Leia says with a small sigh, letting her practicality outweigh her sentimentality. Years ago, when Ben was much younger than he is now, they had made the decision not to have a second child. One was sufficient, and more than enough to worry about with the amount of traveling they were still required to do. Keeping an eye on one and making sure he didn't get lost (and there were a few dreadful times when he _did_ ) was more than enough trouble, adding a second would have been just too much.

She sets the doll carefully back into the crate, and lets it come to rest back down level on the counter. Han moves to slide his arms around her from behind, and she leans gratefully back against his chest.

"We could still keep them in storage?" Han suggests, pressing a lingering kiss to her hair and then resting his chin on the top of her head. "Ben may want to pass them on to his kids someday."

Leia rests a hand over one of his arms, her fingers playing circles with the little hairs just above the back of his wrist. She gazes back out the kitchen window, finds the boys where they've stopped their swimming and come to settled under the Alderaanian tree, Poe's shirt still dangling from one of the branches.

Ben lies with his back in the grass, his damp hair fanned out above his head, one knee bent and lifted upward. Poe's head rests on top of Ben, turned so that he's looking up at Ben's face, his cheek pressed to Ben's stomach. Leia doesn't have to squint to see, even from this distance, that their hands are clasped together, fingers entwined. She can see than Ben is talking and every so often Poe grins wide, or laughs brightly, sometimes flailing their joined hands around a bit before letting them settle back down.

Leia is no Jedi, she chose not to pursue the same path as her brother after she learned of her blood heritage, but sometimes, when she tries, she can feel the threads of the Force, the paths certain things might take. It's never proper visions like Luke has had, never clear glimpses into the probable future, but if she opens herself to the Force she can get a sense of what will be, even if she can't always see the specifics with the clarity of the well trained.

Ripples of feeling, as she watches her son and his dearest companion, as she listens to the living Force around her, feels the ripples of Ben's own sensitivity with it coming from him.

She goes very still in Han's arms for a moment, her fingers stop their circling, and her breathing slows, lips parting slightly. For a moment, just the briefest moment, she can almost brush against Ben's mind, the way she and Luke touched each others when they were fleeing Bespin. And she knows, she just _knows_... 

"You all right?" 

Han's voice breaks through her concentration, and she lets out a long slow breath, shaking her head to clear it. She went a bit deeper that time than she had intended, and in the brief moments of vertigo that follow she is grateful for Han's strong arms still steady around her waist.

"I don't think Ben will be giving us any grandchildren."

**Author's Note:**

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